Published 5:48 am, Tuesday, November 10, 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality toxicologists Joseph Haney, M.S., and Tracie Phillips, Ph.D., with input from other experts, published a regulatory assessment of the cancer-causing potency of isoprene (known as inhalation unit risk). For the first time, an environmental regulatory agency finally puts a number to the chemical’s potential cancer risk to humans.

Toxicologists have quantified the potential cancer risk for isoprene, a substance that is produced naturally by plants, trees, animals, and humans, but which is also emitted via industrial processes. The news is good for Texas.

In short, although exposure to high levels of isoprene (160 parts per billion or higher) for a lifetime has a potential to increase the risk of developing cancer, the good news is that the concentrations of isoprene in the Texas atmosphere are very low (the mean concentration statewide is only 0.13 parts per billion) and do not represent a potential health concern.

The National Institutes of Health already considers isoprene “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen,” but Haney and Phillips’ assessment is the first to assign a cancer risk factor to it.